Blog · Market
AI meeting notetakers in 2026: a fair comparison of cloud and on-device
Most notetakers now offer a bot-free desktop app, so “no bot” no longer separates them. Where transcription runs, who keeps the audio and what the output becomes do. Fifteen products, compared on what their own pages say.
“No bot” stopped being a difference
In 2024 the easy split was bots that join your call against apps that listen on your computer. By 2026 Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, Circleback and Read AI all offer a bot-free desktop app. The question that separates products now is where the audio is turned into text, and who holds it afterwards.
The comparison
| Product | Where speech becomes text | Bot-free option | Entry paid price, as listed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otter.ai | Cloud | Yes, desktop app | $8.33/user/mo, annual |
| Fireflies.ai | Cloud | Yes, desktop and extension | $10/user/mo, annual |
| Granola | Cloud (named transcription providers); trains on anonymised data by default, opt-out | Bot-free only | $14/user/mo, Business |
| Fathom | Cloud | Yes | $15/user/mo, Team, annual |
| Circleback | Cloud | Yes, desktop app | $15/user/mo |
| Read AI | Cloud | Yes, desktop app | $15/mo, annual |
| Krisp | On-device speech-to-text (vendor claim); transcripts stored in Krisp's cloud | Bot-free only | $8/user/mo, annual |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | Cloud (Microsoft 365) | Built into Teams | $21/user/mo, Business |
| Zoom | Cloud | Built into Zoom | Summaries included in paid plans; ZoomMate from $20/user/mo |
| Meetily | On the device; open source (MIT) | Bot-free only | $10/user/mo, Pro |
| Anarlog | On the device by default, or your key, or their cloud | Bot-free only | $14/person/mo, Pro |
| Screenpipe | On the device; source-available licence | Bot-free only | Free and paid tiers |
| Plaud | Cloud language models; a recorder you carry | Hardware | $99.99/yr, Pro plan |
| Omi | Cloud by default; on-phone transcription on the free plan (vendor claim) | Hardware | $129 device |
| Vlocalhost | On the device: transcription and notes | Bot-free only | Free; Pro in early access |
Prices are each vendor's cheapest published paid tier on 10 October 2026, in US dollars; tiers include different features, so read them as a guide, not a like-for-like price. Fireflies' price is from a third-party summary because its own page did not show figures to us.
Money is flowing in, and to both camps
Grand View Research puts the AI meeting assistant market at $3.5 billion in 2025, growing about 25.8% a year to 2033. Cloud products raised the most: Granola's $125M Series C led by Index Ventures, Read AI's $50M Series B led by Smash Capital, and Fireflies' $1B valuation through an employee tender. Hardware is selling too: Plaud says it has shipped over two million recorders. And on-device projects have real followings: Meetily has 31.6k GitHub stars, and Screenpipe is in Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch.
Where we fit
We are one of several products that keep transcription on the device, and we do not claim otherwise. Our bet is on what comes after the words:
- Records in the customer's own format. VIBE mode fills a structure the business supplies, such as a demand sheet or a matter log, after every conversation, with each value cited to the line it came from. See the store counter and law firm case studies.
- An API on the machine. Other software reads those records from a local API, not from our servers.
- Checks that do not trust the model. Decisions that are not in the transcript are removed in code (case study).
If you want a general-purpose notetaker with team sharing in the cloud, several products above do that well. If the conversation has to stay on your machine and end up as a record your systems can use, that is what we built.
Sources
- AI Meeting Assistant Market Report · Grand View Research
- Otter.ai pricing · Otter.ai, checked 10 Oct 2026
- Fireflies.ai pricing (third-party summary) · Sonix
- Fireflies reaches $1 billion valuation · Silicon UK (press release), 12 Jun 2025
- Granola security · Granola, checked 10 Oct 2026
- Granola raises $125M Series C · The Next Web, 25 Mar 2026
- Fathom pricing · Fathom, checked 10 Oct 2026
- Circleback seed funding · Circleback, 26 Nov 2024
- Read AI raises $50M Series B · Pulse 2.0, 29 Oct 2024
- Meetily (meeting-minutes) · Zackriya Solutions, GitHub, checked 10 Oct 2026
- Screenpipe · Y Combinator
- Anarlog · fastrepl, GitHub, checked 10 Oct 2026
- Krisp security for AI meeting assistant · Krisp, checked 10 Oct 2026
- Microsoft 365 Copilot Business · Microsoft, 2 Dec 2025
- Zoom launches ZoomMate · Zoom, 1 Jun 2026
- Plaud tops $100M ARR after shipping over 2M AI notetakers · TechCrunch, 16 Jun 2026